Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | December 9, 2019 | Worcester Business Journal 9 than today: MathWorks employed just 33 H-1B workers, or 1 for every 13 it has today. Virtusa and eClinicalWorks, two other major employers, had similar ratios. Avco Consulting in Worcester used just eight, compared to 376 a decade later. UMass Medical School in Worcester has consistently turned to H-1B workers for research assistants, database and soware engineers and similar jobs. e school is the 13th largest employers of such workers in Central Massachusetts. Jobs that UMass fills with H-1B work- ers are highly skilled, with a limited pool of American-born workers to fill them, said Vanessa Paulman, UMass' director of immigration services. "For post-docs," Paulman said of researchers who have their doctorate degrees, "there's just not a whole lot of U.S. students that are pursuing PhD's in the sciences." H-1B workers, while a small share of the area's total workforce, tend to work in high-paying jobs. e average pay of an H-1B worker in fiscal 2018 in Central Massachusetts was $86,861, according to what companies posted with the U.S. Department of Labor when they applied for approval for those positions. At major employers of such workers, including Bose Corp. and MathWorks, average pay exceeds $98,000. e largest H-1B employers in Central Massachusetts largely didn't want to talk about their involvement, declining or ignoring requests for comment. MathWorks declined to comment for this story, but in 2017, Co-founder and President Jack Little told Boston radio station WBUR the company has long had a hard time finding qualified workers. "ere's always been a shortage in the full history of the company's existence. It's always been hard to find talented programmers," he said to WBUR. Nationally, the crunch is so severe the government stopped accepting appli- cations this year just four days aer the April 1 opening for submissions because the capacity had been reached. Around two-thirds of these workers are on computer-related occupations, according to a 2018 U.S. Department of Homeland Security report. Nearly all the remainder are in fields including architecture, engineering, education, medicine and health. Two-thirds of H-1B workers are between the ages of 25 and 34, accord- ing to the Department of Homeland Security. Roughly three out of four are from India, another 9% from China, and the rest scattered among Canada, South Korea and other countries. Nine out of 10 had either a bachelor's or master's degree. e remainder had a doctorate or professional degree. A resource in danger Congress established the H-1B program in 1990, setting an initial ceiling of 65,000 new visas each year, a limit raised temporarily to as much as 195,000. It dropped back down to 65,000 in 2004. Employers apply for H-1B visas for I M M I G R A N T S F O C U S National H1-B trends The number of H-1B workers is up considerably across the United States in the past decade, along with rising pay. In the past decade, nine out of 10 jobs have been approved, though studies have shown approval rates to have fallen sharply in the past few years. Fiscal year Requested jobs Approved Average salary 2017 403,675 365,682 $85,000 2016 398,718 345,262 $82,000 2015 348,669 318,824 $79,000 2014 318,824 315,857 $75,000 2013 299,467 286,773 $72,000 2012 307,713 262,569 $70,000 2011 267,654 269,653 $70,000 2010 247,617 192,990 $68,000 2009 246,647 214,271 $64,000 2008 288,764 276,252 $60,000 Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security a three-year period, with an extension for up to another three years. For years, employers were very likely to get federal government approval for H-1B workers – at least a nine-out-of-10 chance. at changed with the Trump Administration. From fiscal 2015 through halfway through fiscal 2019, the denial rate rose more than fivefold. Exactly one out of three applications was rejected through the first half of this fiscal year, according to an analysis of federal data by the Na- tional Foundation for American Policy. Another trend making it harder to employ H-1B workers – an increase in requests for evidence – has now hit 60% nationally, the group said. e most common reason? Employers didn't give sufficient evidence for why the job was specialized. Employers may be finding the pro- gram is becoming too much trouble. In 2017, the number of applications sub- mitted to the U.S. Citizenship and Im- migration Services, which oversees the H-1B program fell 16%, its first decline in five years, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "If the goal of the Trump Adminis- tration is to make it much more difficult for well-educated foreign nationals to work in America in technical fields, then USCIS is accomplishing that goal," the National Foundation for American Policy said. UMass Medical School, which em- ploys 169 H-1B workers today, has such a high demand for those workers it pays a higher fee for Citizenship and Immi- gration Services, Paulman said. "e government is definitely crack- ing down a lot on H-1Bs," she said. "ere's a belief that there's enough U.S. workers to fill those jobs. It's our job to prove that the job is specialized and that we need a visa worker. ey highly scrutinize every position." Employers have become concerned about the high denial rates, said Sifat Ahmed, who practices immigration law at Fletcher Tilton. And those employers need H-1B workers, she said, with a reported rate of American citizens or permanent residents making up only one out of five computer science and electrical engineering graduates. "Companies based here in New En- gland experience this deficit in their re- cruitment and are compelled to recruit international graduates," said Ahmed, who grew up in Saudi Arabia. "For the growth of these burgeoning industries, which support the U.S. economy, it is necessary to fulfill any deficit in recruit- ment by turning to international STEM graduates." Fletcher Tilton attorneys Kirk Carter and Sifat Ahmed, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, help companies apply for H-1B visas. Mathworks Co-founder Jack Little has said the company relies on H-1B workers because talented domestic programmers are hard to recruit. W PHOTO/ALLAN JUNG

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